IT IS WITH REGRET

That we announce that the USN has killed the green destroyer program. I was looking forward to seeing them under sail.

LCS. TANJ

Poor Littoral Combat Snip. It can't even get down the river without something interfering with its mission, whatever that is. It seems the latest of the Snip class is iced in Montreal and won't be able to leave until Spring. I'm sure, come Spring, we'll find it somehow spot welded itself to the pier and won't be able to leave until cited by the Canadian Maritime Mounted Police. These poor ships just can't seem to do anything without drama.

Forced to spend the winter after being trapped by completely unanticipated ice

I'm sure the crew will find plenty of things to occupy their time trapped in the ice.

This may be the first USN warship to earn the award of the Sea Service Deployment Ribbon before it ever enters it's own home port. It will almost certainly be the very first USN ship to get the award for making a Great Lakes cruise enroute to its home port.

LCS, making history every single day. Oddly enough, the ships have yet to deploy to the littoral seas in the Persian Gulf or Red Sea where it appears they're not up to standard for taking on either pirates or well armed Iranian speedboats.

COLORED WORLD WAR II IMAGES

An interesting look from the Daily Mail.

USS FRANKLIN

AN UNTROUBLED SEA

Here is how we like to see our warships. Without so many dings in them please.

Doing Something Right. Not Run Down and Golden Anchor

Mind you, I watched in awe as a new skipper, driving his frail little ship for the first time, managed to put a dent in USS Wainwright which was freshly back in port after killing an Iranian warship. Pretty bold move I told the captain. After that, he was keen to let me drive the ship in close. I was OK with that. I like to drive.

It's nice to see a warship of ours with a bone its teeth. Too often these days I see them poking in and out of port at 5 knots, saving fuel like they're the complete incarnation of doofus Jimmy Carter.

ATTENTION DESTROYERMEN

This in an important safety announcement for those tasked with driving our cruisers and destroyers as President Trump begins his 12 day visit to the Far East to rally allies and deter the NORKS and China.

Keep the aircraft carrier well in front of you where you can see it at all times.  

Very important addendum: Stay well back since carriers in front of you will often back down at full power for no readily apparent reason. Be prepared to break right or break left as your whimsy takes you in order to dodge the ship behaving strangely.

Posted 6/30/2017

PACIFIC OCEAN (June 29, 2017) Ships assigned to Carrier Strike Group 5 sail in formation during a live-fire gunnery exercise. The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) is the flagship of Carrier Strike Group 5, providing a combat-ready force that protects and defends the collective maritime interests of its allies and partners in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Nathan Burke)

Failure to understand the dangers inherent in maneuvering warships in a briskly traded sea or in the vicinity of aircraft carriers comes with an enormous penalty and a lifetime of regret. Pay attention!

The price for getting in front of carriers or very large merchant ships steaming at 21 knots is well known by now. All of us ship drivers used to watch the famous "eye ball it in" video. The picture above, which google will not allow me to caption, is all that remains of the USS FRANK E EVANS after it strayed in front of HMAS MELBOURNE. It was MELBOURNE's second ship kill after slicing one of Australia's destroyers in half a few years earlier.

I know, being radical and actually doing the job the Navy trained you to do is an eye opener after a couple of tours ashore and a year in Afghanistan or Iraq as an involuntary powerpoint engineer to some Army general's staff, but focus. The lives of the men and women sleeping in their berths tonight depend on you doing your job. Nobody else is directly responsible for them waking up safe and sound at reveille. That's the job of the Officer of the Deck.

Give yourself a chance to sleep well for the rest of your life. Do your job tonight on the 20-24, the mid and the rev watch. Don't be left there at the end of every day asking, "if only I had...."

The admirals that brought us the Littoral Combat Snip and gigantically worthless DDX, killed SWOS and there is probably nobody left in the fleet today who saw this little movie as a young Ensign (LT if you were a nuke) at SWOS before going to sea on their first ship as an officer. It's dull and boring until you get to the point where people start to die, in the dark, for no reason except incompetence at the hands of the Officer of the Deck and his Junior Officer of the Deck. It started to get more interesting.

As conning officer, I almost never ordered a turn in the Persian Gulf until I had gone to the affected bridge wing and looked and verified that the turning radius was clear. Dhows don't show up all that well, sometimes, on radar and almost never when they're in close. When I was driving from CIC I just made the turns. At 3 -5 knots, the lookouts and bridge officers had all the time in the world to react to anything I missed on the surface. Like that was going to happen....

I STARTED A MOVEMENT ONCE

I also kicked off a couple of phrases. I was a staff officer at Naval Forces Central Command. I was there for one particular reason and I did it. Unlike every other staff officer in Bahrain, I had to go and start up some 5 ton and deuce and a half trucks, a couple of generators and walk a water buffalo every week or two. As the cognoscenti here know, unless you 'exercise' the vehicles and the road gear, they don't work. I had a full set of surveillance gear prepositioned in the Banz warehouse next to ASU. It needed to work. As it happens, we used it, a lot.

Wearing khakis to do this resulted in some really crappy looking uniforms so I started to wear my desert weight nylon ripstop cammo to the office. I was soon joined by the new MCM commodore, then by the EOD officer and finally, reluctantly by the SEAL. We shared an office trailer known as cats and dogs since we were kind of unique.

Soon Admiral Fargo was wearing ripstops and after that, everybody on the staff except the COS. He was the one that stood to argue with the N2 during the admiral's update one day that if we wanted to put ships into the Caspian Sea we could, at any time....dammit. P3 pilot doncha know.

I really shouldn't laugh. He left us in Bahrain to, as I recall, become the same thing to COMNAVFORJAPAN and then left the service, entered the SES and became deputy to the admiral commanding whatnot in Texas where I bumped into him once again. Out there in Japan he relieved a man I knew, from personal experience, to be the stupidest officer in the naval service and that includes the Marines. He competed with J.K Sapp for the title. Unlike Sapp, to the best of my knowlege, Terry never held command.

As I recall, he could read about 4 words/minute. His office floor was stacked waist deep in all the things forwarded to the admiral for his signature. CAPT C never really understood that the job is not to rewrite every damned word, just move them out.

OTOH, I know some parents that never grasped that. My own? They charged my little brother rent and made him pay to install his own phone line. Their revenge? They made me take him to California with me and live in my place. I think parenting classes must teach them to show no mercy. I'm sure glad I never took such a class.

Why we don't stick any ships in the Caspian Sea. A ship would need wheels.

I KNOW

The headline for the daily mail asks where the fallout crackers went. I know. On a ship very much like the one in the masthead of this magnificent blog, I found the XO, who was notoriously prone to sea sickness, sitting in the wardroom while we were underway heading to Canada in a Force 9 blow. The waves were beating the ship pretty badly and by the end of day, when I took the watch as OOD, stuff was getting torn off the ship by the waves.

However, this is an XO story and so, let us pick up the thread of our earlier conversation where we came across the XO sitting in the wardroom eating something that looked very much like a saltine cracker from a plastic looking envelope of them. They looked like the ones I found in the Fall Out shelter I made my way into in Newport, RI long ago. They had that vintage look to them. They also had little black bugs.

Todd and I left the wardroom without mentioning the bugs the XO was eating while trying to keep down yesterday's breakfast. We did, however, laugh about it. It became a treasured memory alongside the skipper demanding to know over the 1MC, who had peed in his coffee cup up on the bridge and assuring the ship's company that there would never ever be liberty call again until the miscreant confessed. I was sitting in Damage Control Central at the time (AKA wardroom) and my DCA turned to me and said, "I did it 10 days ago when we pulled in to BASREC."

We didn't like that skipper, a lot.

AH, HOUSTON, WE HAVE A LITTLE PROBLEM

The news I read is frequently filled with words of praise for the mystical rail gun the USN is going to arm itself with any minute now. It's a wonderf#uckingment of a weapon. It can reach out and touch somebody really really hard. When it works. People used to marvel at the awesome power of the dreadnought and battlewagon but one of the lesser known history whatchamacallits of WWII is that battleships never fired on other battleships. They were mostly destroyed by Billy Mitchell's little devils long before they could get into battle range of the enemy.  There, fixed it.

And so now, the rail gun is going to change naval warfare because, rail gun. You may remember the Russian navy had one of it's frigates and one of its corvettes fire ship killing missiles from almost a thousand miles away and make kills on their targets. What part of thousands of miles of range are we missing out on when we concentrate our research on a weapon that is only good for shooting things within the horizon? You know, that whole curvature of the earth thingie means that the rail guns speedy bullets won't actually hit anything 13 miles away, right? You got that? Shooting over is also called a miss.

Silly naval strategists. The USN doesn't have those kinds of missiles. It might find them useful in a fight.

Speaking strictly as an old fire control officer who thought putting Harpoon missiles in BOL on a snoop tray radar was a good tactic. They may not make it there but they'll die trying.

IT WAS A HELL OF A GOOD DAY

American aircraft fly over USS MISSOURI after the surrender. A tip of the hat to Traditional Vibe

THIRD FLEET NEEDS HELP

There is a fascinating article at Janes discussing the recent complete breakdown of USS ZUMWALT as it passed through the Panama Canal. The ship is currently docked at the former Rodman Navy Base in Panama while experts from Naval Sea Systems Command fly out to diagnose and repair the ships propulsion system.

A series of engine problems has hindered USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000) on its maiden transit from the US East Coast to the ship's designated West Coast home port of San Diego, requiring the ship to be towed through the Panama Canal, US Navy (USN) officials told IHS Jane's. 

The ship is now being held in Panama as the USN and contractors try to fix the engineering problems, service officials said on 22 November. As of this writing it was unclear what was wrong with the vessel, which is the lead ship in a class of three next-generation multi mission destroyers. 

Vice Admiral Nora Tyson, commander of US Third Fleet, has directed Zumwalt "to remain at ex-Naval Station Rodman in Panama to address engineering issues that occurred while transiting the Panama Canal", Commander Clayton Doss, a USN spokesman, told IHS Jane's .

"The timeline for repairs is being determined now, in direct co-ordination with Naval Sea Systems and Naval Surface Forces," Cdr Doss said. "The schedule for the ship will remain flexible to enable testing and evaluation in order to ensure the ship's safe transit to her new homeport in San Diego." 

In San Diego, the ship is scheduled to conduct combat system testing and certification before being deployed to the Western Pacific. 

Pacific Command (PACOM) officials remain enthusiastic about the ship's entrance to the region, despite the engineering issues. "As with all first-of-class ships, the navy will have some kinks to work out," PACOM commander Admiral Harry Harris told IHS Jane's. 

Assuming ZUMWALT actually makes it to San Diego it will join the other "first-of-class ships" known as Littoral Combat Ship, all of which appear to be broken beyond repair and of little use to either Third Fleet or the United States Navy.

A report in 2010 by the Pentagon's director of Operational Test and Evaluation found that neither design was expected to "be survivable in a hostile combat environment" and that neither ship could withstand the Navy's full ship shock trials.[14] The Navy responded that the LCS is built to a Level 1+ survivability standard and that the ships will rely on warnings from networks and speed to avoid being hit, or if hit be able to limp to safety.[15][16] Jonathan Greenert said that the crew would "conduct an orderly abandon ship" if their ship was struck by enemy fire, an action that might not be necessary on other vessels in the same circumstances. The ships were designed to minimize vulnerability with modern automated damage control systems to perform its mission, then withdraw from the area under its own power.[17] 

The LCS's combat abilities were said to be "very modest" even before the cancellation of the XM501 Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System.[18] The Independence variant reportedly has better helicopter facilities and more internal space while the Freedom variant is said to be better able to launch and recover boats in high seas. Admiral Gary Roughead said that a mix of both types would be "operationally advantageous".[19]

It was rather sad to see the way Admirals just flat out lied about the worthless little ships. I was quite disappointed in both Greenert and Roughead. I don't know why they compromised their integrity by lying about a ship that was clearly worse than useless from the very beginning.

As we move forward we need to have actual surface combatants that can, at a bare minimum, defend themselves from readily obvious and apparent threats but also protect unarmed ships they might be convoying through the Strait of Hormuz or the South China Sea. Warships that can't conduct meaningful anti-surface warfare, any  kind of mine warfare or any type of anti-submarine or anti-air warfare are useless and worse than useless because they require real warships to defend them.

The idea that we deliberately keep building ships that cannot survive in a hostile environment and are expected to run away from threats they hear about and "limp to safety" after getting tagged by the bad guys is not really funny anymore. The ships engines don't work and they don't "limp" home, they have to be towed. All of the broken ships of the Navy appear to be headed to San Diego and Third Fleet. When Obama talked about a pivot to the Pacific I didn't think he meant to weaken the fleet and load it up with crippled and broken ships.

Trump needs somebody who can look into the debacle and fire everyone involved.

THE END OF THE SWIFT

I see in my latest update from gCaptain that the SWIFT was completely destroyed by Yemen rebels in the Bab al Mandeb. I spent a lot of time there back in 1984 and I have never seen such heavily armed islands or patrol boats.

UPDATE: Video of the attack



One of the little peeves I enjoyed with my long service with the navy was the incredible naivety of the office clerks that run the Navy. The bean counters convinced them a long time ago that logistic ships didn't require any weaponry whatsoever and that, in fact, weapons just got in the way and cost money that needed to be saved so that sailors could attend LGBTQ training seminars in Norfolk or Washington, DC. The ships that had weapons went into the shipyard to have them removed.

HSV2 SWIFT, Look Ma! No guns!

Oh, and for you bean counters at NAVSEA who thought speed = life? I guess the Swift just wasn't fast enough and of course, it's as fast or faster than the Littoral Combat Ships.

Interestingly to me, one of Jerry Pournelle's sons was the XO of Swift when it was providing relief supplies to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

POUR ENCOURAGER LES AUTRES

As you can see from article at gCaptain, the Admiral commanding US Naval Surface Forces has ordered all the Littoral Crappy Ships to cease operations until they can get some really really good engineers aboard the ships that know how to keep their crappy engines running. They've got to make room for them but I never expected this,

LCS engineers are lined up for execution in front of the ship's gun. If they are very lucky it will work about as well as everything else on these ships and they'll live.

These ships are an absolute tragedy. Those two Riverine boats that surrendered to Iranians in canoes and punts are almost as heavily armed as the LCS and about as reliable. The LCS was supposed to be an all-in-one ship kind of like, oh, I don't know, a Destroyer? Some genius in the Pentagon decided that it would be cooler if they were more 'flexible' and could swap out mission modules so if they were out mine hunting with that module and the Iranians came over the horizon and decided to sink them they had no weapons to respond with because that's a different module and it's 9000 miles away undergoing repair at the contractors's facility.

Not one of these ships has loaded a single functioning module except for the 'unplanned module' which is the berthing module they decided they absolutely had to have in order to get the crew size up to sufficient strength to get underway and hopefully, bore holes in the sea since that's about their only achievement after 8 years. The latest one broke down catastrophically on it's maiden voyage. Brand new, and it couldn't make it. On the other hand, not one of them hasn't suffered a catastrophic engineering casualty that laid it up for months of patching.

There's something about NAVSEA. They really need to get out of the shipbuilding business because they suck at it.

ALL TWISTED

It has been a day of twisted. Dana Milbank has to eat a column of his and he decided if he's going to eat newsprint, everyone should eat newsprint. It's kind of revolting that he thinks if he is going to honor his word, other's should join him in dining on crow. It takes a narcissist.

London, England, is electing a muslim as lord mayor. It's not really anything new about the kingdom we fought off. As you will recall, it was us alone fighting the Barbary pirates and emirates and freeing the crews and passengers they took as slaves from commercial ships sailing the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. England and Europe preferred to lie prostrate at the feet of the islamic pirates. Only the United States, a tiny country on the far side of the world elected to fight back. Londonistan.

I see the mayor of Cupertino is in full throat crying about the depredations of Apple on his fair city. They paid in $9.2 million dollars, 18% of the city's tax revenue, but the mayor insists that since they have really deep pockets they must pay way more. I'm rather surprised that the council is a roadblock to this spendthrift's demands that Apple pay for everything good as a condition of doing business in his little shitty.

No, I'm not an Apple apologist or supporter. I simply think that smacking your lips and sidling up to a successful company in one's geography and ORDERING them to pay their FAIR SHARE while brandishing a knife is unAmerican and unwise. Chang doesn't get it. He figures if they have money, they should give it to him. Of course, the feds agree with him which is why Apple keeps its billions of dollars offshore rather than bringing them home. If they brought it home, the feds would take 35%. Why? What did the feds do that gives us a right to steal income from a successful company? The, "you got the money, give it to us now!" approach happens to be one that I find most disagreeable.

Speaking of barbarous pirates, the Spanish Guardia used one of its boats to seriously harass a US nuclear submarine docking in Gibraltar. They interfered with its safe transit on a massive scale. I remember the Canadian pilot advising me as I docked a warship in Vancouver very late at night as the Green Peace naval commando was zipping into the way in their zodiacs, "Just run them over son, nobody cares about them. They're scum and they'll float to the surface. Don't worry."

WE REMEMBER THEM

In 1963, USS THRESHER took her final dive and never resurfaced. Boats that never come back are said to be on Eternal Patrol.

Starboard bow view, July 24, 1961. (Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the collections of Naval History and Heritage Command)

PRINCE CHARLES' SHIP SINKS AT PIER

The last of the Ton Class Minesweepers has sunk alongside a pier. A sad end to a minesweeper to die of neglect and want of attention at a pier where indifference seems to be the order of the day. h/t gCaptain.

ex HMS Bronington

SHE WAS THIRD RATE

I found the story of HMS LONDON fascinating. She was recently found in the Thames Estuary after a sudden bout of spontaneous combustion that occurred 350 years ago as she prepared for a war with Holland. At that time of century, she would have been a good solid Third Rate Ship of the Line.

It's interesting that some scientists have determined that she probably met her fate because the Royal Navy was reusing old cartridges and they had a tendency to deteriorate and explode, unexpectedly. Scientists figure something like that was what caused one of USS IOWA's turrets to explode during a gun drill. She still showed the effects of the explosion when I came across her in Portsmouth, England on my way to London. My ship pulled in as darkness fell on the 4th of July and I had a good view of the tremendous fireworks show laid on by the English for the sailors on the Iowa.

I remember walking around the Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek before I was commissioned and finding that many of the buildings appeared to be named for people who were blown up by unexpected turret and gun mount explosions. I decided, perhaps hastily, that I didn't want any buildings or ships named after me, thank you, and made it my business to be elsewhere when the spark and flame were summoned to propel ordnance of any sort downrange. As it happens, the Navy has many billets that meet that sort of description. I found the best billet was to fire the guns remotely from the Gun Control Consoles in the Combat Information Center. I did a little of that as Fire Control Officer; nowhere near as many rounds as my predecessors had fired, but enough.

Drawing, c 1660, of the London by Willem Van de Velde National Maritime Museum, London

HAVE THEY CONSIDERED SAILS?

The USN, in a bid to prove itself totally irrelevant, has just deployed an entire battle group propelled using only bio-diesel fuel. It's actually an unusually good price for fuel at $2.05/gal but, I strongly suspect that an update will show that someone misplaced a decimal point. In any event, I expect many more 'mechanical breakdowns' as high-end fuel injectors try, and fail, to inject french fries into diesel engines.

Every time I think that Mabus cannot be a bigger idiot, I am struck anew by his dogged persistence in setting the lowest possible bar for stupidity and pig-headedness. If the Army was run by an idiot of his calibre, it would implement an aggressive new strategy for cutting costs by fielding sepoy armies and bringing back the bow because--reusable unleaded ammo.

Nicely armed Marines Storm Ashore from Newest USN Amphibious Ship!

We can only hope that Mabus never sees this one or he'd surely throw $42 billion at Northrop Grumman and demand two of them to serve as "scouting platforms" for the fleet. For a few billion more, Northrop Grumman would endeavor to deliver a drone version.

LATE TO THE FIGHT

Defense News reports that the Defense Department is cutting 12 Littoral Combat Ships from its budgeted and forecast fleet. With 40 ships now scheduled, the number is still 38 too many for a ship that cannot get to the fight, bring anything but swords and pistols or survive should a fight find it. The ship is well-nigh defenseless and therefore cannot serve as an escort, even for Marines.

The fight to keep the ship doesn't appear to have any named advocates within the Navy Department and its only expressed concern is that by whacking the number of ships purchased, the Defense Department is cutting down on the visibility of our ships overseas. Nobody is talking about diminishing the combat power of the Fleet that springs from the class if numbers of LCS are reduced. Nothing from nothing still equals nothing.

I wonder if naval officers still play tactical war games. Have any sat down and played, "Defend the Sea Lines of Communication through the Strait of Hormuz" using the absolute current 'value' provided by existing Littoral Combat Ships?

Here are excerpts from the concluding paragraphs on a monograph concerning the Littoral Combat Ships that the current Deputy Secretary of Defense wrote when he was the Deputy Secretary of the Navy and an ardent supporter of the Dindu Class*,

As stated at the very start of this monograph, however, trust in the LCS concept and
design remains low. It seems certain that this circumstance will not materially
change until LCS is in the fleet and the concept and designs are proven sound....

In sum, then, despite a rocky program start, the Littoral Combat Ship will soon be in
fleet service, and in large numbers. Designed to be a flexible, multirole component in
future Navy battle networks, LCS’s reconfigurable modular design will be a first
among Navy combatants. Indeed, because the ship is so different, much hard work
and experimentation still needs to be done to unlock its full potential. But a solid
foundation has been laid. The seaframes are steadily improving and the first
increments of three mission packages are coming along, to be followed by evermore-capable increments over the life of the ship...

The only thing of note that has changed since Mr. Work wrote that is that Russia has demonstrated some killer long range missiles fired from both its tiny warships and diesel-electric submarines. Oh, and the War on Terrorism is spreading across the entire Near and Middle East and North Africa with some concerns expressed that perhaps 6th Fleet, if we had one, could really use some warships that could support taking the fight to the enemy. Tough to do when you have to be towed into position.

LCS-6 Luring the Enemy into Pistol Range

Notes:
*Dindu Class - It means what you think it does. There are still no missiles, no anti-submarine warfare sensors or weapons, no air defense systems or sensors....just metal that barely floats or moves under its own power.

THE EMBARRASSMENT CLASS

I don't know if professional Navy officers feel embarrassment anymore. We used to feel it keenly when we deserved to. It was akin to humiliation and one worked very hard to avoid embarrassing oneself or one's seniors. Sadly, it appears that nobody feels any shame in failure or outright humiliation anymore. If there was even a hint of the old Navy remaining alive in the new Navy one would see countless officers hanging their heads in shame at foisting the LCS and JSF on the Navy and Marines.

The crew of a broken ship can feel embarrassment for being unable to maintain or repair a ship entrusted to them. Supposedly, the Navy went out of its way to train and prepare the crew to operate, maintain and repair the ships it gives them. There is damage or repairs that are beyond ship's company's ability to repair but those were once usually inflicted by the enemy or typhoons and not the vagaries of simply getting underway on a beautiful day 20 days after leaving behind the builder's yard, sea trials and final acceptance of the new warship by NAVSEA and SUPSHIP.

I once worked for a CO who found that his Ops Department had made an elementary mistake one night. We spent the entire morning the next day hunting for enemy mines in our own private section of the Persian Gulf about 5 miles away from the other 2 ships engaged in the hunt. The CO finally pulled and reviewed the message that included the navigation data for the day's task and had it replotted himself. He found that we were indeed way "outside the box." His anger was palpable.

When we anchored that night he had all officers report to his cabin where he started out a remarkable ass-chewing by simply stating that 'we' had made him look like a complete idiot in front of his peers. This man was by no means a reamer and screamer. He was a thoughtful and thoroughly decent officer but the events of the day had piled up to the point where he wasn't going to take it anymore.

I'm not sorry I was excused the tirade. I had other things to do but I knew I didn't want to let anybody down the way the Operations Department had let him down. We busted our ass to make the ship go and to that end we were also ready to pass almost any readiness inspection at any time. We did it for our pride. After all, a crappy ship has a poisonous reputation all along the waterfront and the crew used to feel that rep in many ways. I'm not sure if that's the case anymore when ships don't belong to a crew.

Way back, a long time ago, we had a class of ships that the LCS replaced. I was never a fan of those ships after many early encounters with them. They had one massive design flaw that was applied to every aspect of the ship - it was cheap and shoddy and had zero redundancy. Still, they could get away with many minor tasks if one didn't peer to closely underneath the layer of paint.

There is one simple rule to naval gunfire. It boils down to, 'don't shoot your own ship.' In the space of about 2 years, half a dozen of the FFGs managed to shoot themselves. I suspect the Type Commanders and the Fleet Commanders got pretty tired of NAVSEA's bleating about how the, "ships just couldn't help themselves since they were designed to shoot into themselves from the very beginning."

Defanged Frigate With Gun Aimed at Stack and other Gun

In other words, it wasn't a design flaw, it was a signal point of pride that NAVSEA had designed a ship where the Safe Stow position for a naval gun, pointed it directly at the ship's exhaust stack and 20mm close in weapon system. In short, nobody at NAVSEA felt any embarrassment about the problem and did nothing to fix it until it happened again and again and again.

The waterfront was less forgiving. I remember strolling to the Main Brace at 32nd Street one day after knock off and seeing an FFG return to port to moor alongside a sister ship. It came into Pier 4 and the ship it was mooring alongside had prepared a little welcome that outraged the CO and Squadron Commander of the damaged ship. The undamaged ship's crew had put an enormous bullseye on their own stack. The skipper and the Commodore, they were embarrassed. One might say that the skipper felt humiliated. Here they were, returning home with tail between their legs and their mighty close in weapon system lying smashed on the flight deck where it landed after being blown off its mount by their own gun as smoke poured out of the new holes in the ship's smoke stack.

So we find ourselves with our newest addition to fleet welded to some pier in the Tide Water area with people scratching their heads trying to work out how the metal filings found their way into the lube oil strainers. There's a few ways I know.
     -There is metal to metal contact somewhere in the gear train that is grinding up the reduction gear
     -There is metal to metal contact in the propulsion engines
     -The ship is so stupidly designed that all lube oil feeds into one massive filter and nobody knows
      where it is coming from
     -Sabotage

Walking USS MILWAUKEE  Home

Our embarrassing problem in the midst of OPERATION EARNEST WILL came down to a plotting error that was inexcusable but harmless. It caused no damage and no gaps were left after we hustled over to where we were supposed to be and completed the assignment. For me, the saddest part was that somehow the same exact plotting error was made on the paper chart and on the electronic system we used as the conning officer's primary plotter. In other words, the same wrong information was entered into two different navigation systems by two different people. The redundancy inherent in the system failed. That happens sometimes. It's embarrassing. It should be.

FLAMING PRIORITIES

I know a thing or two about priorities. I learned them much the way most of you learned. Faced with the need to accomplish required tasks in a timely fashion one has to determine which one to start with and which one to finish first because resources and time and money are always limited. While I was still reading books on Strategy and Politics an interesting book came into my hands. I bought the book and then made the mistake of loaning it to a friend. He was a lawyer but I thought I could trust him.

The book is A Report from the Field THE STRAW GIANT Triumph and Failure: America's Armed Forces by Arthur T. Hadley. It was initially published in 1971.

     The critical importance of making the proper decisions at the correct level burst on me in such compelling fashion during World War II that it is worth a brief detour to record the moment. At one time, one of my loudspeaking tanks had gotten a bit chewed up. Not only could it no longer loudspeak, it couldn't even croak. I clanked back to division headquarters and got a priority order to  have the tank repaired, and then clanked off to the repair battalion. I arrived at the tent of the lieutenant colonel commanding the maintenance battalion at the same time as did a jeep that belonged to one of the assistant division commanders, a brigadier general. The jeep needed a new roll bar welded to it. 

     The lieutenant colonel in charge of the maintenance battalion called in his heavy maintenance and repair officer, a captain, and said to him, "Here is the loudspeaking tank that has to get back to combat right away and here is the general's jeep that needs  roll bar. Get them fixed up." 

     "Yes, sir," said the captain. "Which one has priority?" 

     "Give them equal priority," said the lieutenant colonel. 

     The general's jeep and the talking tank followed the captain into an apple orchard, where beneath the trees we met the repair officer, a first lieutenant, my own rank.
"Lieutenant," said the captain, "here is the talking tank for a new loudspeaker and the general's jeep for a roll bar. Work on them first." 

     "Yes, sir, " said the lieutenant. "Which one has priority?" 

     "They have equal priority." 

     Now following the lieutenant, jeep and tank arrived at the welding section, where stood one corporal with one blowtorch. "Corporal, said the lieutenant, "here is the loudspeaking tank for a new loudspeaker and the general's jeep for a roll bar. Stop what you are doing and work on them first." 

     "Yes, sir, " said the corporal. "Which one has priority?" 

     "They have equal priority." 

     The corporal looked at his single blowtorch with its single jet of flame and shook his head.

The above is the preface to his lead in to discussing how far out of the box the Air Force went when it was ordered to design and build the first solid fuel land-based intercontinental ballistic missile back in 1957. The author compares and contrasts the successful design and fielding of the Minuteman missile with the TFX program. The entire book is fascinating and covers the broad spectrum of war, preparedness, acquisitions and leadership.

My own best/worst experience with Priorities! Dammitttt!! came when I was but a humble Chief Engineer working to keep the ship underway even though the Engineering Department was down to just 18% manning. Most of the crew was away in the Persian Gulf having fun on ships at 250% of normal manning. My temporary commanding officer had told me that he had rich experience as an engineer since he was fresh from being the Main Propulsion Assistant on USS CONSTELLATION (CV-64).

"CHENG," he said to me, "I only have 5 number one priorities that I expect you to complete perfectly and I'll be satisfied and you'll be happy." He claimed his 5 priorities included fairly important things but considering that 82% of my snipes were vacationing abroad it left me wondering just how I was going to manage.

We managed to bumble along for a few weeks just fine and then one day it came to light that we had been gigged in a letter that had arrived in the Ship's Office, addressed to the Commanding Officer, announcing that at some point, in the months past, the ship had been delinquent in sending lube oil samples to the lab for analysis. We were put on report.

The skipper, in a rage, killed me and danced on my burnt corpse screaming about the black eye he had just received over the Lube Oil Analysis Program failure. I pointed out from my not unpleasant little corner of hell, that something as stupid as "programs" was not on his list of 5 priorities, or mine, and had joined little things like gauge calibration on the list of 'things to do later." He was unrelenting in his merciless kicks to my head and body and screamed at me that, "of course it's not you idiot! I expect you to do your damned job in addition to the 5 number one priorities!"

He was the only skipper in Group ONE that I know, who never went on to command frigates, destroyers or cruisers. He really had no sense of priorities at all. One of his favorite expressions insisted that, "if you just take care of the little things, the big things will take care of themselves." He kept repeating this to me as he kicked and stomped which left me time to reflect on how we had just finished realigning two main propulsion diesel engines and the number one Ship's Service Diesel Generator with 3 other guys, making our own phenolic shocks on a milling machine we borrowed and passing a diesel inspection that week. None of them were what anyone would call, little things and yet they had to be done.

It's very important for all parties to know what the real priorities are, particularly when resources are strained and agendas conflict. And, really, one can only have one number one priority. Everything else takes more time, money or effort.